Author Archives: debugducker

What is Technical Debt

The Future you Problem

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Hello and welcome to a new week on this beautiful blog of mine. Today is a topic that is of interest to me and possibly everyone reading this. It could also be something you ran into during a coding project. It is called Technical debt, which is the concept of delaying or omitting work to complete a project but cause more work to do in the end. 

Let me give you an example that I have dealt with, and that you may have also dealt with. So you got a coding assignment to do right and that deadline is coming fast. So you set out to do it in the quickest and easiest way possible without a care for code layout or etiquette, it is just you working on it after all. The next day, you think to yourself that you may need to rework some facets of the code to make it run better or make it look neater. You then open up the project and look in horror at the mess you made and realize that it would take more time and effort to make it neater or run better than it would be to just continue on and get the project done. That is technical debt and yes it accrues interest.

The example was more personal and not that bad when you realize that the only price you paid is something you can’t stand to look at and also something that will take a long amount of time to fix. Like I said before it is just you working on it and as long as it works it’s fine…but what if you weren’t alone, say what if you were working in a team of 2 or 4 or perhaps a whole company amount. Then we have problems. Cause not only the debt is put upon others, but even money can be a problem if it is a company involved. 

There is also types of technical debt. Planned Technical Debt is meant to establish one presence in the market or gather feedback from customers, kinda like prototyping from my understanding. There is also Inadvertent Technical Debt when the developer is unsure of market requirements or aware of the architecture. 

Many things can cause technical debt to happen, such as poor management or the code not being reviewed well enough.  So to avoid such things it’s a good idea to 

  • Understand the Requirements
  • Understanding Decision Consequences
  • Supervising the Process

So be careful when coding a project as it may come to bite you in the future, so take into consideration the future you and help you out.

Be a Better Dev. (2020a, October 5). What is Technical Debt? (as a software developer). YouTube. https://youtu.be/2nDxKYIajoU?si=crpLGeoCewYZ_kEj

Eye on Tech. (2020b, October 7). What is Technical Debt and Why Does Tech Debt Matter?. YouTube. https://youtu.be/cdzUXv8SpjY?si=FHZ0Vl6ZVkhuSNeE

From the blog Debug Duck by debugducker and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Introduction of Me

What is a debug duck?

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Hello and welcome to my blog. Refer to me as the debug ducker. The purpose of this blog is to detail my computer science journey and maybe some other stuff if possible. As of now, I am a going into senior year and ready to graduating so I’ll be documenting tons of stuff.

Now my name. It sounds silly right, but the name is based on a code debugging technique that is an coding industry practice.

The basics are that you’ll need a rubber duck or anything inanimate, and when you run into a code problem you need to debug try explaining what the code does to your duck, tell it what programs you’re running within the code, and the purpose of the code. The idea is that when you explain and go over the code with the duck, it’s supposed to help you catch what’s wrong as you explain it.

I used to do this back in high school and found it helpful. I remember my other peers doing the same thing, and they found it helpful as well. Though I haven’t used it as I progress my programming career, the technique stuck with me. Mostly because it sounds silly talking to a rubber duck but don’t knock it till you try it. So whenever you encounter a coding problem, talk to a rubber duck or any inanimate object about it and see if you can catch any errors.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Debug Duck by debugducker and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.